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Browse through and read hundreds of articles on the topic of marriage
Many wives share disappointment that their husbands rarely talk to them at a deeper level. “Emerson, when we were dating, we used to talk long into the night getting to really know each other. What happened to him?”
In the beginning, after God had created Adam and placed him in the garden to cultivate it, He said, “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him” (Genesis 2:18).
In the Bible, we find two realities to which we are to respond: God’s commands and God’s promises. God calls us to obey His commands and trust His promises. Most of us have sung the song "Trust and Obey,” which captures these two quintessential truths.
There are certain phrases we have been programmed to understand in a specific way whenever we hear them. For example, if someone says to us, “We need to talk,” we know there is bad news to come and we get in defensive mode.
Is your normally happy-go-lucky husband suddenly more sulky and moody? Has your typically fully engaged and intimate husband for some mysterious reason become more distant and even physically absent?
Because I say that during conflict a woman’s deepest need is to feel loved whereas a man’s deepest need is to feel respected, people often think I’m saying a woman doesn’t need respect and a man doesn’t need love. That’s NOT what I’m saying.
If we listen to the culture, we could feel pretty hopeless about marriage. But those of us who are Christ followers, have HOPE – as the Johnson’s shared in my last blog. Allow me to share one more hope story…this time from a husband who had thrown his marriage away by failing to deal with his sin.
Last time, Bill shared how he learned the true meaning of unconditional love for his wife by discovering the log of self-righteousness in his own eye. I challenged you to take a look at your own “logs.” How did you do?
This testimony prompted deep gratefulness in my heart! My wife and I were born into families that did not necessarily set us up for success. We married in between our junior and senior year of undergrad (college). I loved my wife dearly, but by far spent more of my time thinking about the “husband is the head of the home” scriptures.
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